When do you think it's most logical or sensible to start sharing your music under some kind of catchy band name? The point of asking is that perhaps your music sounds great to YOU, but perhaps it isn't really great objectively and perhaps other people might not like it so much. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are. So if you create your "band name" early on and start releasing lousy music, you could ruin your own name before anyone notices you. Over time, you may get both creatively and technically better, but people might have flashbacks to earlier musical disasters and think, "Oh. That guy. Ugh."

I reckon the chances of anyone paying any attention to you at the point where you're still in the nascent stage of your band's life are minimal to none, so there's a really only a limited amount of damage you could do. By the time you're big enough for any kind of reputation to matter you'll be skilled and competent and can look back on any early stuff and laugh. And for those few people who have tracked you throughout your career, well, they get the hipster points for being able to say, 'I remember when they played [insert small venue here] and they were terrible."Which, of course, will only help persuade other people that you're good...

blinddrew wrote:I reckon the chances of anyone paying any attention to you at the point where you're still in the nascent stage of your band's life are minimal to none, so there's a really only a limited amount of damage you could do. By the time you're big enough for any kind of reputation to matter you'll be skilled and competent and can look back on any early stuff and laugh. And for those few people who have tracked you throughout your career, well, they get the hipster points for being able to say, 'I remember when they played [insert small venue here] and they were terrible."Which, of course, will only help persuade other people that you're good...

LOL! Earlier tonight, I was reading a thread in one of the SOS forums about "making it in the business" and some comments were made about bands who were actually good and getting some publicity, but when one of the band members got sick and couldn't finish the tour, nobody wanted to have anything to do with publicizing them and they basically became nothing.

Well, my thing is that I probably couldn't actually play any music I ever produce. Not only have I not had piano lessons since I was a preteen, and not only have I not even tried to continue learning how to play as an adult (I'm now 47), with a left hand that's partially numb and not as dexterous due to nerve damage in my neck and shoulder, the chances of my ever doing anything live is next to nothing. I do have a MIDI keyboard for twiddling around to find nice motifs or short tunes, but I must program them into a DAW's piano roll to actually turn it into music.

Though I can type 80 words per minute with 100% accuracy, I make a lot of mistakes and I have to use the backspace key a lot. Even with the backspacing, I still hit 80 WPM. With all the mistakes I make when typing, despite decades of daily typing, I can only suspect that any attempt to play music on a piano or keyboard would only result in lots and lots of mistakes on stage, and the piano/keyboard has no time-warping backspace key, unfortunately. lol

I love making music, however, even though I'm only getting started. If nothing else, and if there's no huge or recurring cost involved, I can just list some of the best completed tracks on iTunes or somewhere and just let people buy them if they want to, and if not, at least I still have my day job. And if I get an extra hundred dollars a month here and there, I can at least order pizza more often.

I don't see "evolution" as a bad thing. there are videos, demos and stuff you can find in the internet of famous performers' beginning days and that are absolutely crap. that doesn't affect their current quality (or lack of), IMHO

Butterfried Bacon wrote:LOL! Earlier tonight, I was reading a thread in one of the SOS forums about "making it in the business" and some comments were made about bands who were actually good and getting some publicity, but when one of the band members got sick and couldn't finish the tour, nobody wanted to have anything to do with publicizing them and they basically became nothing.

Or you can simply develop and move on. The example above was about a band I was previously in. The band in question is still on hiatus, but in the mean time some of the members are now involved in new projects. For some of us and some of our new musical endeavours our past helps to boost the profile of the project. For others where it is less appropriate it is quietly glossed over.

Further to that in the 90s I was in a string of bands that morphed from one to another with numerous line-up and name changes along the way, although the musical genre remained much the same. It had advantages in that we could pick and chose which bits of our past we would use at any one time, and we were able to "rebadge" old recordings to give the new version of the band a presence without having to get back in the studio.

Also please do keep in mind that branding is a skill in itself. You won't get it right first time and it is something that needs practice. If you practice whilst you are getting started people will be forgiving, even think it is charming. However do something inadvertently stupid when you are more established will make you look like complete fools.

I know it is pragmatic but best to make mistakes when you don't have so much riding on it.

Oh and by the way, think the professional marketers will help you later? I work in the industry and can tell you that some of the most stupid things I have seen come from those that are supposed to know better. If you have at least some background in this stuff it will help!

PS On a personal note I think my branding is better than my music which makes me very sad